Ms Adeline O'Brien:

I will just come in to follow up the issue of food poverty, and I thank Deputy Kerrane for the question. During the pandemic we saw people accessing services related to food poverty who had not previously done so because of the raising of awareness around the services available in the local community. Generally, the people who are accessing food supports and experiencing food poverty had many other issues; there was a lot going on in their homes, and a lot more going on in the community. We see a real connection between food poverty, energy poverty and digital poverty. It was people accessing general supports. When all else fails and a person has spent the limited income he or she has on energy, what is left is food. We have established a network of support through the communities and linking with those who had not engaged previously and were further on the margins. Thus there is a support system established there through the food bank system and that is an infrastructure from which other supports can be disseminated. The Deputy is absolutely right that nobody would want to be doing that and we did not think we would be addressing food poverty at this scale across the country and in every community one can imagine. It has highlighted much greater levels of deprivation in addition to the food poverty people presented with initially.